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What the Internet Blackout Actually Meant: By the Numbers

The internet blackout blackout of Wikipedia, Reddit and Craigslist made giant news yesterday, and contributed to a number of senators swinging over to oppose the controversial SOPA and PIPA bills. But just what we were giving up by losing those websites for an entire day, an eternity in internet time?

Internet analysts and search optimizers Covario tried to figure it out. By combining demographic data with search metrics and statistics for each website, they were able to put together some infographics representing the impact of each blackout across the US. Unsurprisingly, the East and West coasts were the most effected. Here are some of the highlights, with the graphic below.

302,222 hours were not spent on Reddit, either good or bad depending on how you look at it.

At around 33,000 job postings a day and $25 a post, Craigslist could have lost up to $825,00 in revenue yesterday.

20,275,000 college students had to workaround the blackout with caches or mobile apps to use Wikipedia. Or read books.

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